Posted on 08/12/2011 3:10:41 PM PDT by 92nina
With Congress continuing to extend the FAA reauthorization rather than address a long-term measures, the airline industry has been held captive by the whims of hostile lawmakers. Now the debt limit negotiations have provided another moving front in the fight. It has been suggested that the Joint Committee may consider targeted taxes on the airline industry in the form of new fees in order to reach their $1.5 trillion deficit reduction goal. While we have outlined before why we believe a tax-hike would be a non-starter for the Committee, suggestion of "user fees" as code for tax hikes has been used to fool even the most fiscally resolute before. Moreover, general aviation has borne increased scrutiny from revenue-hungry lawmakers since many Members of Congress suffers from the delusion that businesses can afford new burdens where individuals can't. In reality, new burdens on general aviation would unfairly target small and mid-size businesses who depend on general aviation for commerce, goods, medical care and a variety of other resources. With 85 percent of enterprises that depend on general aviation consisting of small and mid-sized businesses, Increased "user" fees would completely stifle the transportation faculties of many local communities...
Read more: http://www.atr.org/airline-fees-off-table-debt-negotiations-a6402#ixzz1Ur0T2viK
(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...
Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious
Which part of “we are broke” is not sinking in here? We can’t afford to subsidize ANY industry anymore. If these routes are profitable they’ll survive. If they’re not they’ll go away. That’s the way the free market works.
If the cost of these routes needs to go up to cover the cost then so be it. If some of them go away, too bad.
But get this through your head. We can no longer afford to give taxpayer money to whatever industry whines the loudest. Those days are over.
Screw the aviation industry. I’m now expected to get my junk touched at the airport every time I want to fly because of the incestuous relationship between the government and the aviation industry. Cut all their funding, all their special deals. They should make it on their own like the rest of us.
We gave $15B to the airline industry following 9/11 to keep them afloat.
Subsequent to that, the security for airline travel became theatre. Now it is sexual molestation in the name of security.
They can go out of business as far as I’m concerned. They’ve mis-managed their security, their business model and their customer relations. They *deserve* to go out of business.
In 2010, the median household income was $52,026. As it relates to any government program, for every $1 million this translates into the entire annual income for 20 entire families.
The FAA’s Essential Air Services subsidy enables communities to enjoy airline service that is not otherwise economically “sustainable” (a topic the left loves to scold the rest of us about). However, because we have reached our limits of spending without restraint, we must be brutally honest about the holistic economic effects of every single dollar that government borrows, prints and taxes out of the private economy. I think we will find few million dollar blocks can be honestly traded for the wealth of 20 families.
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